Fire crews gain edge on vicious Yuba blaze

Robert Salladay and Larry D. Hatfield, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Monday, September 29, 1997

1997-09-29 04:00:00 PDT CALIFORNIA; YUBA COUNTY -- OREGON HOUSE, Yuba County - The biggest wildfire of the year in Northern California blazed near here Monday, rousting more than 1,000 people from homes and campsites and destroying at least 150 buildings.

Fueled by optimum fire conditions - dense vegetation from last year's wet winter, extremely high temperatures, low humidity and erratic winds - the fire was not expected to be contained until at least Tuesday morning, California Department of Forestry spokeswoman Pat Burger said Monday.

By midmorning Monday, the fire had burned 5,743 acres and was 80 percent contained, meaning firefighters had lines around much of the blaze. Some 83 inhabited buildings, 65 outbuildings, 16 cars and recreational vehicles and two commercial establishments had been destroyed, she said.

Residents were being allowed back into the burn area Monday morning to assess damage to their property, but otherwise the area in the rugged mountains north of Nevada City was closed.

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Nearly 1,500 firefighters, backed up by air tankers and helicopters, were battling the fire that spread through the Sierra Nevada foothills over the weekend after being ignited about 2:30 Saturday afternoon when a generator in a motor home shorted.

The erratic blaze, fanned by shifting winds and a brutal dry heat, raged through brushlands near the tiny foothill towns of Dobbins and Oregon House, leaving a moonscape of charred foundations and abandoned cars along the narrow mountain road connecting the towns.

Despite the destruction, only one injury was reported: a firefighter scorched on the neck.

By Monday morning, the fire had jumped several ridges into the pine-filled valleys that surround the two small towns. The blaze threatened Collins Lake, about 40 miles north of Sacramento, an area heavily used by campers and summer-home residents.

Firefighters, including several dozen California Youth Authority prisoners, age 18 to 25, were battling the blaze in temperatures that went well into the 90s Sunday. By 8 a.m. Monday, the temperature already stood at 86 degrees, with humidity at only 15 percent.

Winds calmed from 30 mph to less than 10 mph Sunday evening and were at only 5 mph from the southwest at midmorning Monday, but the forecast was for gusts to pick up again.

As with most wildfires, the path of destruction was random. Near Oregon House, the fire destroyed a 5-acre property that contained three homes, a restaurant, a wrecking yard with 500 cars, and four tow trucks. Everything was reduced to a black and gray ruin of twisted steel and wood. In the middle of the property was a perfect pile of new lumber, untouched.

"We thought it was going to go up the canyon," said Joe Cardoza, 62, the owner of the property, Foothill Towing and Auto Wrecking. "It went up the canyon and then the north winds blew it, and it came right back in our faces."

Surrounded by the destruction, Cardoza sat under one of the only remaining live trees on his property, an enormous oak, and waited for his wife, Lynne, to return from inspecting their house. His 11-year-old grandson, Jacob Fetsch, threw rocks into a plastic cup as reporters stopped by to interview them.

"First, it was just a little glow in the sky," said Fetsch. "We were scared, but not as much. It started to smother down and then it just got huge and ashes started going everywhere."

Cardoza lamented the loss of the restaurant, which had only been open a month. He had leased part of his property and a 1902 Western Pacific dining car, which he bought in 1964, to a woman named Bonnie Lou, who was staying with friends Sunday. She had named it Bonnie Lou's Restaurant.

"She made a nice little restaurant out of it," said Cardoza, who spent Saturday night in one of his tow trucks while the rest of his family stayed with friends in Marysville. "Let me tell you, this fire had no feelings for nothing."

About 300 campers fled the Thousand Trails Park near Oregon House as the blaze neared. Thirty trailers were destroyed. Manager Leonard Bridges said he forced about 35 reluctant residents to leave as the flames were nearing the driveway about 12:30 a.m. Sunday.

"We had no choice," Bridges said.

Many residents left their animals behind. Three horses were burned and sent to the UC-Davis School of Veterinary Medicine for treatment. Yuba County animal control officers rounded up more than a dozen terrified and exhausted dogs. They found a live sheep, burned so badly she looked like a brown goat, amid four dead animals in an enclosed pen.

At the western front of the blaze, hand crews worked a 24-hour shift to contain the blaze. CDF fire Capt. Greg Royat said it was the worst blaze he's seen in Yuba County.

"I've never seen a fire of this size in my 20-year career," he said.

Near Oregon House, Connie and Jerry Smith could smell the smoke and feel the heat from the wildfire Saturday night, but it didn't occur to them to change their routine.

"We went to bed. We shut all the windows, and went to bed. We woke up a couple of hours later with flames right across the street," said Connie Smith, 50. "The firefighters couldn't even see us because of the smoke. We just grabbed our clothes, a cat and the bird and we got out barely with our clothes on. We were the last ones out."

While about 100 people waited at an evacuation center at Foothill Intermediate School in nearby Loma Rica, Smith went back to inspect their mobile home Sunday afternoon. The land on all sides of her home was scorched black, but Smith and her husband still have a place to live.

"We must have been pretty good in our lifetimes to escape," said Smith, who has lived in Dobbins for a year.

"It still makes me want to cry."

News filtered back slowly to the four evacuation centers set up by the Red Cross and local law enforcement.

The blaze threatened Yuba County's Renaissance Winery. But the winery and much of the rural area of houses and trailers on large-acre properties were spared.

The fire is Northern California's worst in a fire season that runs through the end of October.

Although the number of wildfires in the entire state so far - 16,383 - is almost twice the number of last year at the same time - 8,990 - the total acreage destroyed this year is much less - 275,110 acres this year compared with 600,067 acres by this time last year.

In Northern California, there have been 5,944 fires on CDF land, with some 38,103 acres burned. Last year at the same time, the figures were 6,680 fires and 202,470 acres.

The subtropical air mass that hung over the state all summer reduced the number of severe fire danger days, said Jerry Geissler, CDF's assistant deputy director for fire protection.

He also said an extra $5 million was put on top of the department's $30 million firefighting budget, enabling it to maintain summer staffing at levels that made it easier to stop wildfires before they got out of hand.

"We've had a better opportunity to contain them before they get large and damaging," Geissler said.

U.S. Forest Service spokesman Matt Mathes said 96 percent of all fires in the state burned less than 10 acres and a significant number of them were kept under 1 acre.&lt;